South Georgia Island: a homecoming of sorts for Inigo

Since leaving Punta Arenas, the ship has been heading toward South Georgia Island, a 170-kilometer-long strip of land covered in mountains and glaciers. We should arrive today, Thursday. One of the researchers on the ship, Inigo Everson, is well acquainted with this island. Inigo is a marine biology specialist and honorary professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UK). At 75 years old, Inigo is a veritable fount of knowledge – and a keen wit. This extraordinary man first set foot on this British island in 1964 and has been back to this region around 20 times since then. Over the course of 50 years, he has spent some 80 months of his life in the Antarctic, much of it on this island but some of it on the continent too. One of the buildings at the South Georgia Island research station bears his name.

Inigo Everson, 75, has spent some 80 months of his life in the Antarctic/Inigo Everson, 75 ans, a passé 80 mois de sa vie dans la région antarctique.

-Inigo, what brought you to this island 50 years ago?

At the time, the waters in this region were severely overfished. South Georgia Island, with its abundance of marine life, was an obvious destination for fishing boats. So we came here to set up rules on managing and exploiting these resources. That was the purpose of the newly formed Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which I did a lot of work for. My task was to provide it with biological and environmental information on the marine life – their numbers and distribution throughout the region. At the time, the great blue whale population was sharply down. Fearing the same fate for the fish, I made this the focus of my research and studied the local species, how many there were, their size and growth rate and how they reproduce. Now, the rules are in place and widely obeyed.

Tomorrow, when you sit on the research center pier, you’ll understand immediately (wide smile)! I’ve always been attracted by the beauty of this landscape. But most of all, it’s the ideal place for the type of research I was involved in, because I could witness firsthand a complete and highly representative example of the food chain at work – from phytoplankton all the way up to whales. I also conducted in-depth studies on the biology of krill, which are prolific throughout the Antarctic region. It’s not only at the bottom of the food chain, but it’s the main food for a large number of species – fish, penguins, birds, seals and cetaceans. Learning more about krill’s role, importance and interaction with the overall Antarctic ecosystem remains one of the major scientific questions of the day, and it’s also one of the goals of this expedition.

– Now that overfishing is no longer a problem, what are the main threats to this environment?

It’s clear that climate change is greatly affecting these regions, and that human activities are making things worse.

-Has this region changed since you first came here in the 1960s?

Yes, absolutely! In the 1970s, the British Antarctic Survey began a long-term program to study Hodges Glacier, on South Georgia Island. That glacier no longer exists. And others have shrunk drastically. You can easily walk on the shoreline now, whereas before, the glaciers pushed up against the sea.

This expedition highlights new types of research that are possible today. Using very powerful tools and instruments, not only can we take samples of a huge range of things – organisms, particles, biochemical elements, etc. – but we can also analyze them in greater detail than ever before. These major advances can help us, for example, shed light on the crucial role played by organisms such as bacteria and viruses in the global environmental balance. That’s what some of the projects here are looking at – and it’s one of the things that make this expedition unique. Another is the large group of researchers from so many different fields gathered here, and most of them are still at the start of their career. The biggest leaps forward in science start with the interaction and exchange of ideas that take place in such gatherings. I hope all these young researchers will get as much enjoyment out of this work as I did.